Voting Behaviour At UK Elections Is Determined More By Issues Of Personality And Image Than On The Basis Of Policies Or Performance In Office

‘The main reason for conservative dominance in the years 1951 to 1964 was labour disunity’ Assess the validity of this view. (June 2011)

The author, V. O. Key, states the results of a survey that shows that voters tend to vote for people who vote for candidates that will help them financially. He also states that people tend to vote for a certain party’s candidate because of their ties to the party. Key then declares that one can predict a person’s vote based on their personality and attributes. Key also shows that although these behaviors show strangeness, the voters have great importance to politics. Key says that the voters’ behavior has importance as it helps candidates discover the nature of the voters’ interests to try gain an advantage. Finally, Key states that voters behave as well as possible, considering the possibilities of other

In this essay I will assess the outcomes of Additional Member system, First Past the Post system and the Closed Party List system. The F-P-T-P system is used to elect the members of House of Commons and local government in England and Wales. Voters select candidates, and do so by marking his or her name with an ‘X’ on the ballot paper. This reflects the principle of ‘one person, one vote’. The Additional Members system is used in Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, and Northern Ireland Assembly and Greater London assembly. It is a mixed system made up of F-P-T-P and party-list elements. The Regional party list (or the closed party list) is used to elect the

In James N. Druckman’s Priming the Vote, he asserts that nowadays numerous academics presume that voters’ choices are essentially molded by campaigns. For decades, traditional wisdom recommended that campaigns had little to no influence on voters. Druckman insists that numerous academics have noted a relationship between campaign differences and overall distinctions in voting conduct. Some academics propose investigational proof that certain rhetoric can influence a voter’s choice.

When assessing the various intricate denouements of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods of the British political history, one must stop and wonder about the performance of the Conservative party as one of the protagonists of the parliamentary struggles and changing social and demographic scenarios. By engaging in such exploration, it is almost impossible to avoid one of the most formidable questions which might consequentially arise – was the Conservative party a deliberate and conscious derivative of the changing political climate or merely a spontaneous chain reaction driven by luck and circumstance? The answer to this question may be crucial for understanding the nature of the party’s success/failure. In order to explain why this very nature may be the crux of articulating Conservative politics during these two historical periods, we will use the analogy of Real vs. Nominal wages .

One area in which Major faced criticism from his own party was on his policy of taxation, which has been pointed out as a break in continuity from the Thatcher years. The hugely unpopular poll tax was, rightly, one of the first casualties of the Major administration. His self-styled 'compassionate conservatism' was at odds with the die-hard Thatcherite elements of the party. Direct taxation was raised by £10.3bn , although he did introduce a reduced rate of 20p for a small number of taxpayers in an attempt to widen the tax base and spread the burden more thinly. There was an increase in 'stealth taxation' for example extending the range of VAT to previously zero-rated items and in fact raising the standard rate of Vat from 15 to 17.5%; perhaps the appropriate step in a recession, but at odds with the Thatcher legacy when, in the early 1980s recession, she cut tax. This in fact is one of the areas in which he drew strong criticism from those in the Conservative Party who wished to see him stick a little more faithfully to the Thatcher line.

What causes voter apathy? Why, in the most recent federal and provincial elections, did roughly 40% of eligible voters stay home? Perhaps candidate A, running for party A led by leader A, is not perceived as being significantly different from, or better than, candidate B, running for party B led by leader B.

Firstly, they all agreed with a Post War consensus. This meant that Labour didn't have a competitive edge over the Conservative party. The whole point of an opposition party is to argue with the policies that the government attend to implement. This was extremely difficult in the 1950s and early 1960s because they were both following the same policies and moreover the Conservatives were

The electorate are those that are eligible to vote, and many factors can influence the way in which the electorate do vote. Primacy, also known as long-term, factors are those that have a long term influence on the way in which somebody votes, for example the social class in which that person belongs to. Recency also referred to as short-term, factors are those which have a short-term influence and most prominently during the lead up to an election, an example of a recency factor is the impact of mass media. In the last few decades many long-term factors have become less important due to partisan and social de-alignment, whilst the short-term factors have been ever more emphasised and prominent.

The idea that an individual's psychological makeup is an important determinant of a person's political beliefs has been highly discussed, debated, and studied. The article “Psychological Underpinnings of Democracy” by Marta Miklikowska presents evidence and argues that a person’s support for democratic values can be predicted by certain psychological elements: empathy, authoritarianism, self-esteem, interpersonal trust, normative identity style, and openness to experiences. Theoretical Background and Past Research As Miklikowska states, “Democratic values refer to the basic principles of democratic governance that allow distinguishing between democratic and nondemocratic process such as e.g. equality, impartial justice, universal suffrage, or freedom of expression.” (604) In essence, democratic values are the ideals which allow democracy to flourish.

With a population in excess of 1,000,000 people and over 40 different wards and constituencies, Birmingham is generally regarded as the second city of the United Kingdom. Within Birmingham, each ward must vote for their individual party counsellor who may be representing the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrats party . The aim of my investigation is to find out whether the different levels of qualification and household income throughout Birmingham has any effect on the party counsellor chosen for that specific ward. I will be investigating; what factors have an effect on levels of qualification and income and how these levels of income and qualification influence the overall political status of a Birmingham ward.

How relevant It would also be difficult to deny that Labour’s leadership image were responsible for their poor showings in the 1983 with Michael Foot as leader and 1987 with Neil Kinnock. This view is supported by Jenkins’s study of the 1983 election, stating “Labour seemed to disqualify itself from office. Michael Foot personified in every way Labour’s unfitness to govern and the extent to which it had lost touch even with its natural constituency” . Indeed, poll ratings for Michael Foot had reached an unprecedented low of a popularity rating of just 24%, the lowest since polling began , thus suggesting the electorate saw him as the most improbable prime minister, hence a poor electoral performance in 1983. This view is given further support

Thatcherism was successful in its time but eventually in the same way when a new phone is introduced, we forget about the older versions of that phone because we want the letter and latest modern technology of the time. Using this example, we can understand why the conservatives were not appealing to the public, they were not changing the notions of their politics and they kept trying to follow Thatcherism which clearly became an outdated concept to use. They needed to rebrand themselves and present themselves as more modern. Though to be fair the term ‘modern’ in politics is a rather contested term. It would be more fair to say adapting to the most preferable current trend of the time, which is what Tony Blaire was doing. Blaire shifted more towards the centre to appeal to a wider range of electorates whereas, Thatcherism was far right in its politics. Major, Hague, Smith and Howard did not shift away from this type of politics and nor did they ever introduce anything to demonstrate that the Conservatives were adapting to the modern era. Whilst they were not focused on portraying this to the public. Tony Blaire on the other hand was. He embraced ‘The Third Way’ ideology which was also embraced by President Clinton and a couple of European leaders. The

Almost the entire disunity manifested in the Labour camp throughout Shearer’s short incumbency was due to member three of “Labour let-downs”: David Cunliffe. He was also the man who replaced Shearer, beating other competitors in a bruisingly public campaign to be the next leader of Labour. Unpopular, unadmired and borderline unwelcome within the caucus, Cunliffe fueled his campaign with support from the wider membership, despite his perceived arrogance, by hauling the party to the left. Predictively, this failed to snag voters away from National. David Cunliffe, New Zealand’s Jeremy Corbyn, led the party to its worst election result since 1992: a disastrous 25 percent.

It has long been suspected that the order in which candidates’ names are placed on a ballot somehow influences the decision-making process of voters. Theories of ballot position have suggested, variously, that candidates benefit from being placed first on the ballot, due to a ‘primacy effect,’ or last on the ballot, due to a ‘recency effect’. However, the evidences provided were sometimes incomplete or contradictory.